She'll Never Forget
by catherine ampere
Summary: Sort of a companion piece to He Remembers, but with the other characters as well. Ziva reflects on the life she's been given.


**Yes, yes...I know I'm supposed to be working on OHJD. But this came to me and I couldn't resist. It's _sort of_ a companion piece to He Remembers. I don't think there's necessarily anything in here that doesn't flow with the other one, except that maybe it's a bit later on. It's really tough to write Ziva and still inject some fluff without losing her character's voice entirely, so let me know what you all think. Enjoy!**

* * *

><p>She's not quite sure how she got this lucky.<p>

Luck is the only thing you can call it, really. It's not like she deserves this. Or him. _Or her_.

She had never been the philanthropic type. Or the altruistic type. She didn't have time to be either. Instead, she learned how to capitalize on a weakness to gain leverage and ultimately complete your mission. She learned the different ways to end a man's life without a single scream. She learned how to make the night both her enemy and her friend, her safety net and her dangerous bedfellow.

She remembers with great ease how it felt to watch her loved ones slip away, one by one, from hatred and bad timing and bitterness of the heart. She remembers the exact moment when she knew that she could never love another human being the same way again.

It still surprises her how wrong she was.

Sometimes when she closes her eyes she can hear her sister's laughter in her ears. It was light, carefree. Her voice tinkled like chimes on a light, breezy day. She can still feel her brother's lean arms reach around her and sometimes, for a brief instant, she thinks he'll really be there to carry her home after a long day of playing on the beach. It still breaks her heart when she opens her eyes and finds no one there.

Except him.

She can smell her mother's cooking late at night when her stomach rumbles from too many missed meals. She can taste her hot soup glide down her throat and warm her insides. But then she remembers that she isn't here, and she'll never be full like that again. And she's tried-_believe her, she's tried_-to re-create the recipe, but it never tastes like it did when she made it. There will always be an ingredient missing.

Them.

She cries on her thirtieth birthday. It should have been her. Her time should have ended years ago. It was supposed to be her baby sister waking up, feeling the sun on her face as she celebrates another year of life. So she spends the whole morning retching, isolating herself from the people who have now come to love her, the same people that showed her how her heart can sometimes expand twice as big after losing everything it loved before.

He ignores her wishes for solitude and holds her hand. They lie side by side on the cool tile of the bathroom floor as she regales him with stories of the young lady she was sure would be even more beautiful than she could possibly imagine. He listens in complete rapture and whispers quietly that he'd like to have met her. She lets him hold her while she cries.

The irony doesn't escape her that the one man she never thought she could see herself with is the one man she couldn't possibly live without.

On her thirty-first birthday, she's sick with the flu. He's been out chasing leads but manages to text every hour and ask how she's doing. When she hears keys rattle in the door, she thinks he's blown them off to spend time with her, and it makes her both flattered and annoyed. She's surprised to find her boss there, juggling a large tub of chicken soup. He scolds her for being out of bed, and marches her right back to her room despite her protests. He heats her a bowl and reveals that it was his late wife's recipe.

She's never felt so loved in her whole life.

Her bubbly, intelligent friend brings her bat-shaped cookies and the warmest blanket she owns. She swears that it has healing powers-since her friends at the church made it-and wraps it tightly around her sick friend until she can't move. She sits and chats about everything that's been going on at work, making sure to leave nothing out. She leaves a small, wrapped package on her end table when she leaves and wishes her a happy birthday when she thinks she's asleep.

She can't help but feel that her sister is still with her sometimes, living on in her achingly compassionate friend. She sometimes wonders if the gothic look was a secret fantasy of hers that she chose to live out now. Stranger things have happened.

She didn't realize that her half-birthday was a big deal, but he insists. It's just the two of them, _for now_, and they relish the time alone. He bakes her a cake, from scratch, and she doesn't tell him that it's a tad overcooked. He swears that he couldn't be too sure, he didn't want to risk the consequences of making her eat a raw cake, but she smiles and tells him it's the best she's ever had. He wants to know if she meant in the kitchen or the bedroom, and she deliberately doesn't answer.

She thinks he should know by now that he's the best she'll ever have and more than she'll ever deserve.

This birthday is different from them all. She's thirty-two now, and she feels a different kind of feeling as she opens her eyes.

Hope.

She can smell fresh flowers by her beside and hears the sound of heavy breathing. When she opens her eyes, she sees him lying there, close by but not nearly as close as she'd hoped. She stretches her limbs and remembers a time not too long ago when birthdays were a sick reminder of all the lives she'd lost, all the lives she'd taken, and the life she was never supposed to live.

She uses the little strength she has to reach towards his sleeping body. He has _her_ in a vice grip, even in his sleep, and she does her best to untangle his arms and release her from their prison, not that she notices a thing. She's already like him that way, already possessing the talent to sleep through anything and everything. She scoops her off his chest and inhales the scent that pricks her eyes with tears.

She'd never believe it if she were alive. Neither of them would.

She watches her open her little eyes and yawn, and she can't believe that she might have missed this. Suddenly it feels as though she was meant for _this_ all along, that the hardened life she'd had wasn't her true course but a detour that led her to this one. It's hard to think she might not have been around to hold this tiny thing, too tiny than she knew humans could be, and she still can't believe that she is now entirely responsible for giving her a life almost completely different than her own.

If she'd been asked years ago, she would have very confidently declared that her life had lost its meaning when the last of her beloved family (she doesn't count Eli, she _never_ counted Eli) left this earth. She hid the remaining shards of her heart in places where no one would be able to find them and convinced herself that no one would ever want to.

She hadn't had much of a choice, really. She considers herself an innocent bystander, a seashell that got caught in the tide and carried to shore. But either way, the people in a place she hadn't expected knew where to look and slowly put her back together again. She let him claim her patched up heart as his own, and she never looked back.

She wonders if this beautiful, tiny person in her arms is a signal-a signal that they'd all forgiven her, that they want her to be happy and make the most of the opportunity she's received. Her baby sister would never have this moment, would never know what it felt like to wake up next to the man she loved and hold the one thing in this world that had the power to stop time. She wouldn't get the chance to stare at her daughter, the best birthday present she'd received by far, and wonder what she'd grow up to be. Those kinds of thoughts used to make her sad; now they make her appreciate every second she's been given.

It still amazes her that her once destroyed heart, an organ she thought would never recover, has grown back and beats stronger than ever before. She owes it to her new family-the ones who put her back together and the man who stole her heart before she even had one to give-for showing her that sometimes the most wonderful miracles come from misery.

She may not be sure how she got so lucky, but she doesn't give a damn anymore. As long as she gets to keep everything she has.

* * *

><p><strong>I should have warned you about the fluff. Oops.<strong>


End file.
